Borrowing Days
by Nova Bucker
Summary: Discovering your life to be a lie and that you're a failed clone attempt with one foot in the grave isn't exactly a direction a girl imagines life taking. Feverishly agreeing to track down a man who turns into a Not-So-Jolly-Green-Giant to tell him he has kids and hoping he'd take them in? Even less so, she was a nobody clone, not a miracle worker, but she'd try anyway dammit.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything, everything belongs to Marvel and whoever else has copyright rights, no profit whatsoever has been or will be made from this fanfic.

**A/N:** Okay, my knowledge of Hulk-lore is barebones (as in Wikipedia, MCU and google-based) at worst and mediocre at best compared to my knowledge of other Marvel-lore(take X-Men for example) but when have I let that stop me? This fic is happening, and is a part of a shared universe posted on Ao3 as a series called 'Distorted Horizons' under my account name Markala, the fics are in no particular order as of yet (I will post a timeline when I think it's relevant to have, much, much, very much later). So this fic was spawned by the lack of fanfics I can find of Bruce and his kids (yes, KIDS, with an S, plural, two of them, I'm not sure if he's had more…) the canonical ending for one of them was depressing as shit(which kinda made me not want to read it when I got unintentionally spoiled)… So anyhoo, I hope you all enjoy this little venture. Enjoy and tell me what ya'll think in the form of reviews/comments, go peeps!

* * *

**Prologue**

_Everything had been a lie._

A lanky girl runs, canvas shoes scraping noisily through the gravel, out into the darkness.

"_Sorry my dear, you were in an accident."_ _**Lies.**_

The knapsack she had snatched on her way out seemed to get heavier with every step and her legs and lungs started to burn.

_She had been in school, when the sky seemed to break open._

It was all she had in the world now, more than she'd every had now that she thought about it.

_First the ceiling, then the walls, flickering in and out of existence like static, then crumbling away in little blocky bits into nothing, and her classmates and teacher had gone on as if nothing was awry._

She runs until the sweat sticks her short blonde **–shorter than it's ever been– **hair to her forehead, and her breaths come in short gasps, but she keeps running **–it used to be long and beautiful–**

_Mrs. Calvin had kept talking, the soft undercurrent of chatter from the rest of the students had kept going and soon their voices started to distort, like something out of a nightmare._

The girl was rather tall for her thirteen years of age, but not by much, her hands clutch at the straps of her knapsack. She can't stop, she can't ever stop, she _had_ to get away-!

_The school around her is gone and the sky suddenly ripped open-__** "What's happening?!"**_

Before long she can't breathe, she has to stop, take many breaths, then run again **–she used to run better than this–** she had to keep going.

_A giant white tear had just appeared in the sky, and it grew larger, like a yawning maw of nothingness swallowing up the world getting closer by the second. Then her teacher and classmates disappeared, yet their warped voices lingered, growing louder, resembling howls more than actual voices._

The girl doesn't know where she was headed, she didn't exactly have anywhere to go but away **–away from the lies–**

_She was terrified, she tried to run as the horizon disappeared __**–she'd always been good at running– **__but was forced to stop when the White Nothing started to eat the ground before her __**–nowhere to go–**__ the trees, the birds, the cars, the buildings, the people lay frozen, flickering once then dissipating into thin air._

She had nowhere and _nothing_, and worse-

_The voices and noises had lingered, warping into echoing howls, growing louder and louder __**–even after their owners were GONE –**__ as the nothingness swallowed everything, growing closer in every direction __**"-critical- failure!"**_

–**They would come after her–** The blonde stands, slinging the **–it's hers now–** knapsack over her shoulder and she moves onward.

_The nothingness swallows her __**–there's screaming–**__ there is NOTHING, nothing but stark burning whiteness all around her and everything is both quiet and loud as the cacophony of warped voices and sounds rise to a fever pitch __**–she's screaming– **__Panicked voices, unwarped, undistorted, yet still without owners, rise through the howls within the Nothingness._

All she has now was the clothes on her back, the meager contents of her knapsack and sixty dollars –**and assorted change, that wouldn't last her long at all–** to her name **–'stretchin' money's key,' Ma always said–**

_She didn't wake up in her bed, the girl had woken up in a bed in a room she didn't recognize, and there had been a pretty woman who'd said that she'd had a bad fever __**–she'd believed her–**_

The dawn had broken over the desert landscape, as the sun peeked out from below the horizon.

_Days passed, she'd asked where she was, the woman had said that it was a 'Private Healthcare Facility' but the girl didn't buy it. __**–Why weren't her parents there?–**_

The day grew hot, and the deserted highway seemed to stretch for miles, and it was starting to get harder and harder for her to breathe.

_She'd noticed that things were wrong, when she'd found her door locked at night __**–prisoner–**__, by day she could go to the mess hall for food, but with supervision due to some electrical issues with the building posing safety hazards. Then six days later, they still hadn't gotten word from her parents, her current 'babysitter' was called to take care of something in a hurry, and had left the door to the girl's room slightly ajar. _

_So she went looking, she NEEDED answers-_

A truck had pulled over and the man driving had offered her a ride, and the girl, sweaty, out of breath and exhausted, had accepted and climbed into the passengers' seat.

_All the hallways had looked the same, plain white, boring, and nondescript, not even the hospital she'd visited when she'd broken her arm falling off a horse had looked this bland __**–she'd gotten lost–**__ But she'd eventually come to a storage room, slightly ajar, with a passcode electronic lock on the door that the girl had only ever seen on TV._

Awkward small talk was made, who she was, where she was from, where she was headed… Okay this conversation was getting really uncomfortable, _really_ fast, and she notices the glint of a switchblade handle on the dashboard.

_Coincidentally, one of the many filing cabinets was still open, and many files lay scattered on the floor. But something drew her attention, a small corner of color in the dim lighting __**–a photo–**_

Several miles down the road, the man is increasingly frustrated for some reason, so he parks, still in the middle of nowhere.

"Why are we stopping?" The blonde croaks out nervously, and the man shoots her an oily smirk.

–_**A photo of me–**__ The picture is of her, years ago, when she was around five years old, except in the photo she was asleep, and on some sort of respirator machine. She picks up the file the picture had seemed to have fallen out of, which had even more pictures of her __**–I don't KNOW these people, what do they want with me?!–**_

_The part of the label on the file read '__**-2.0: series #372'**_

Blood stains the seats now, the man hadn't back out and had then tried to more aggressively climb on top of her. She hadn't had time to think or do anything other than snatch the switchblade off the dash and bury it in his gut as he pounced from the drivers' seat and shoved hands up her shirt.

**Stabstabstabstabstabstabstabkeepstabbingkeepstabbing-**

_Her life had been fake, everything and everyone in it, her parents, her friends, her town, everything. And she was some sort of clone, an experiment __**–like something out of a science fiction movie– **__And she was one of a couple __**hundred.**_

The blonde takes his wallet, wipes off the blood onto the corpse's pantleg then and drags the body out of the truck and behind the nearest desert bush, then drives the truck to the nearest town, she'd driven before **–she'd never driven before, not for real–**

_Her first reaction was disbelief, it couldn't be, it HAD to be a lie. These people were crazy, but everything that had happened recently-!_

She puts on the man's jacket from the back to cover up her bloodied white t-shirt, clean of blood due to him not wearing it wearing earlier. And the blonde scrounges up whatever useful supplies she can from the truck before ditching it just outside of town.

–_**Subject is exhibiting early signs physical breakdown, development of asthmatic symptoms and weakness in respiratory system is discouraging. Formula 703b of Serum is obviously unstable, Subjects 372-E through Q are exhibiting the same symptoms– **_

She doesn't buy much in town, just some cheap clothes from a thrift shop, and some little essentials from a drug store and a gas station.

_**-Subject shows signs of further decline, short life expectancy is likely and the suffering of Subject 372-R's physical performance is worrisome, if pattern continues, schedule Subject 372-R for immediate termination and autopsy along with Subjects 372-E though L, in the meantime, continue tests and observation as per usual.**_

There was nothing quite like watching the 'world' end, waking up to complete strangers, finding out you were a genetic experiment, running away and discovering that you couldn't run as much as you used to **–she never could–** without nearly suffocating. Generic drug store inhalers made the travel so much less of a hassle, though not by much.

A virtual reality, like something out 'The Matrix,' except her escape had been entirely facilitated by human errors, plural and she was now essentially homeless **–always have been– **

_She doesn't know how she got out, all the blonde knew was that she had run back to the office part of the building that she could remember, __**-it had been dark-**__ and snatched her most recent babysitter's __**–one of the kidnappers– **__knapsack that he had forgotten on a chair, she remembered it. She takes it, and stuffs her entire file into it, which is around half and inch thick, and two more of the scattered files for good measure. She finds a watch in one of the knapsack's outer pockets, and all she has to put in the bag is the toothbrush she'd been given upon waking up in the facility and the blanket she'd stripped off of her bed, and with these things, she runs._

_Alarms go off, blaring like sirens as she forces open an emergency exit, and made a mad dash for the fence, which she climbs. She flops over to the other side breathlessly as her lungs seems to stutter dangerously on every intake._

Washing her face and hair in a gas station lets her stare at herself, her eyes a _blue_. They'd always been blue of course, but everything, even the grungy, gross bathroom seemed brighter, must much, _muchier_ **–it was more, all the colors were–**

_The blonde staggers to her feet, bag strap clutched in one hand, and attempts to run. She can only manage a desperate jog without getting winded, but she doesn't look back, not until she was roads and roads away._

_But there was that realization, that she, one of the top runners of her middle school's __**–it never existed–**__ cross country team, __**couldn't run anymore**__._

_Oh, she could jog, get winded, stop, then try again, but there was no reaching that freeing all out sprint, that mad dash to hit that almost miraculous second wind running until your muscles couldn't drive you forward anymore __**–now she couldn't–**_

_Her eyes had watered, and the dust and sand seemed to irritate her entire respiratory system just by being in her vicinity. The girl discovered that she could run in increments, sometimes her lungs seemed to be working like they had before __**–the lies–**__ then the next moment she would be cough and wheezing for breath._

She didn't have a name, her old name was fake, given to her by fake parents, nonexistent ones **–I wish they were here–**

She takes a bus, in hopes of finding cooler country.

OOOOO

It doesn't take long for the truth in her files to hit her**–short life expectancy is likely–** to be honest, she'd expected to die in some spectacularly stupid fashion, like breaking her neck falling off a horse or getting run over by a tractor, there were plenty of those in Karsh Flatts **–there is no Karsh Flatts–**

The blonde girl was getting used to the constant allergies, to everything, and she still didn't have a name **–her name was FAKE–**

It's been two-and-a-half months **–she misses everything–** since she left and the facility, and she finds little reason as to _why_ she keeps going. What should it matter? She was already in the process of dying anyway.

–_**termination most humane–**_

She'd already cried it out, quietly in crowded places, and loudly the no-one but the wilderness to hear her sobs. After a week of bursting into tears with little provocation, it was as if the tears had dried up and all she felt was bereft. Two weeks after –**who-the-fuck-cared because she certainly didn't–** here she was, in the middle of some random clearing somewhere in the middle of the woods somewhere in Iowa… Or maybe she was in Minnesota, knowing her penchant for getting herself lost.

She'd committed more petty crime in her two-and-a-half months of freedom than she'd ever done in her whole life, stolen cars, items, money, bus tickets… No-one had come after her, but she still hadn't taken any chances and just kept going.

Now here she lay, in the itchy grass, practically in hives, hungry after having not eaten for days **–because what was the point really?–** and her insides seemed to writhe in pain, actual physical pain.

The pain was recent, and becoming an on-off thing, as her body had become this moody thing swinging wildly between utter misery and _'meh,'_ and now she lay here in the middle of nowhere, staring up at the starry night sky, shivering with fever, staring up at the purple dots and lines of blue, green and white swirl above clearing she was in.

"Pretty colors!" The blonde girl giggles feverishly.

The light show continues, the colors dancing, swirling, pulsating through the air like the thrums of a guitar. The grass is blown flat, as the winds from all around pick up, and the blonde's head flops to one side as she enjoys the harsh breeze.

**WWHHOOUUUSHHHHH!**

Blue eyes scan the softly lit clearing, blues, greens, and whites contrasting against the dark night. A dim figure stands in the middle of the clearing, a figure stands

It's clearly a woman, built like the top tier of Olympic athletes and tall, almost metallic grey skin and a short crop of black hair that ended in a long ponytail, and a rather skimpy-looking suit of… very charred armor. But the odd thing was that as she drew closer, her measured steps parting the grass almost silently, the blonde noticed that the lady was kinda see-though **–translucent!–** And there were little twinkles in her skin!

"Hi Star Lady!" The blonde greets in a chipper tone, her hand flopping around in greeting.

"Greetings little one," The woman's voice seems to echo, "I am Caiera the Oldstrong-"

Everything fades out of focus as the woman speaks more, the blonde was interested, but she was just really, really sleepy.

"Are you a martian?" The girl mutters out curiously.

**FWWWOOOSHHH-**

The lights seems to flicker ominously, and the Star Lady speaks again, louder this time, with more urgency, "seeing as you are the only witness, I come to you with a request."

"Ash- Ask away, Star Lady," the blonde says good-naturedly, **–gosh the dancing yellow ponies were pretty–**

"I would ask that you find a man of your world," Caiera begins.

"Men ain't in short supply ya know." The blonde quips airily as the lights in the sky flicker again.

"Enough of this!" Caiera snaps impatiently, "my time is short, will you see my children to their father in this world?"

"Y- your kids?" Even though the girl was currently experiencing fevered hallucinations of pink polka-dotted bats, this was weird even by fever-dream standards, "why would you trust me with your kids? I just met ya a few minutes ago…"

"I have no other options," the woman states grimly, "if I had, I would have picked someone more, hale."

"At least you're honest," the tween on the ground laughs mirthlessly, "but for what it's worth sorry for having one foot in the grave before we met."

"I am Caiera the Oldstrong of the planet Sakaar," Caiera speaks quickly, "my two sons names among the world's iterations would be Skaar and Hiro-Kala, and I require you to find their father on this planet."

The blonde waits quietly, vaguely distracted by the humping hippos in the background.

"Their father is the warrior known on your world as the Hulk, or by the name of his alter ego, Robert Bruce Banner, you must find him."

A blonde eyebrow hikes upward, "does he even _know_ he has kids with an alien Star Lady?"

"No," the grey-skinned woman answers flatly, "they are the children of the Hulk in _my_ world iteration, because they _will_ not exist in this universe, I was able to see my twin sons to here before I pass on."

"Soooooo," the blonde's southern drawl crawls out from the depths, "you're an alien Star Lady, from another planet, from another universe, sending her kids to another universe, trusting a stranger you just met to find said kids father and take care of them in the meantime, who isn't their father, except he is in another version of him from another universe which is your universe, and you also happen to be dead."

"Yes."

…

"You sure as the waffle irons in the chimney that they can't be sent to Earth in your own universe?" The girl questions blearily.

"Either this or they die _with_ me."

**-Well, the angry tablelamp agrees, letting kids die is bad for ratings, so why not?–**

"Jus' makin' sure I got everythin' straight," the blonde mutters, before nodding weakly, "sure, yes ma'am, I get yer kids to their Dad."

–**Hopefully **_**before**_** the slow onset of 'mass internal organ failure' occurs–**

"I am grateful, to you," the Star Lady pauses, "do you have a name?"

"Don't got a name," the blonde spits out with sudden agitation, "it was _fake__**.**_"

"What is _your_ name then?" The lights above flicker in and out of focus faster now.

The blonde girl thinks for a few moments, then she speaks, "Salem, like the city, always wanted to visit with Ma, but I'll find their Dad, definite."

"Then I thank you Salem," and then a smiles stretches across the glowy, grey-skinned Star Lady's otherwise austere face.

The lights flash, brighter, brighter, then there is small green blob and an even smaller grey blob as Salem's visions swims feverishly. Caiera was disappearing, she points to each blob, mouthing the names of her children at each one respectively.

The lights flash once more, like a beacon, bathing the entire clearing with bright, white light, and then something occurs to her.

"Hey, you're from another planet, how're you speaking English?!" She calls out, and then Salem promptly blacks out.

OOOOO

Hours later, blue eyes shutter open, and the newly dubbed Salem groans.

"Damn, that was some fever dream," she mutters, rubbing her head, "surprised some animal didn't get the munch on me last night…"

–**Talk about disappointing–**

There is a rustling next to her, and Salem's eyes dart to its source and-

There are two little kids digging through her bag, two little five-year-old-looking _grey-skinned_ kids and the skinnier one had black, tattoos? Or birthmarks? On his face, right over his eyes in a line then they both curved towards the bottom of his jaw, like someone had painted black, inky hooks on his cheeks…

–**She'd just agreed to take care of a couple of alien kids, NOT a fever dream–**

"Son of a bitch."

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**A/N: **The lack of periods and punctuations concerning before and after the bolded words between the dashes are on purpose, it's supposed to be jarring and a bit disjointed.

Also, holy crap, I wrote a thing! Notice that I have a very limited perspective of Caiera's personality, I've never read Hulk comics and I've only ever read Wikipedia and watched the animated 'Planet Hulk' movie (and we all know how accurate those are) so there, I tried, if I fucked it up then be thankful that Caiera's probably not going to make another appearance in this fic (or my universe, depending). Okay, from my understanding, in its continuity, Planet Hulk occurs, but instead of Skaar and Hiro-Kala surviving while Caiera dies, in the universe they came from , they all perish, but due to some interference/stuff I won't tell because that would spoil other stories Skaar and Hiro-Kala are transported to my hybrid-MCU-other-fandom-stuff universe (AKA: my Distorted Horizons-verse) as little five-year-old-equivalent kids because the stipulations of the 'interference' dictated that they HAD to be sent to a universe where they would not come to exist in that particular universe 'naturally,' thus they were sent to the Distorted Horizons-verse, and likely to never hear from that particular iteration of their mother again (due to being in different universes and all) and Salem just happened to be there and Caiera didn't really have any other options.

And let's just get this out there: I hate Marvel's version of the Illuminati, instead of some secret society of bad guys/chaotic neutral/or maybe even criminals like they were in Gargoyles, Marvel WASTES the Illuminati idea on a grouping of six random guys action like more secretive versions of the Justice Lords, seriously, who died and made them god? Just ugh, I don't Marvel's Illuminati because somehow they managed to make more of my favorite characters douchier than even I can stand(I KNOW that the Illuminati weren't responsible for Hulk getting stranded on Sakaar and that Hulk's engine was sabotaged, but the fact that they put Bruce/Hulk there in the first place was still pretty douchy).

Okay, rant over, sooooo, what do you guys think? Good? Bad? Meh? Good and bad? What parts? Why? Or just drop random bits of encouragement if you want? Did my Hulk-lore research pay off at least? Tell me what you think, and until next time, ciao peeps!


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